Can a self-audit answer questions about DWP groups? Opinion

By letting two nonprofit groups associated with the Department of Water and Power and its workers’ union essentially audit themselves, DWP commissioners are either getting to the bottom of a $40 million mystery or digging a deeper hole for the utility.

The public deserves answers to exactly how $4 million a year in ratepayer money has been used by the two groups set up a decade ago to improve worker relations, promote safety, training and communications and build “mutual trust and respect.”

But will the groups’ own accounting firm provide those answers? Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin was preparing to have his office conduct an official audit. But a spokesman for Mayor Eric Garcetti was quoted elsewhere suggesting that official steps, including “legal options to force disclosure,” would be taken only “if this audit doesn’t cut it.”

How will city officials know if the groups’ own audit doesn’t cut it? How will the public know it’s trustworthy?

It may not be as simple as city officials wanting to do the right thing. Getting around legal impediments to the city probing the two entities, which are run by the DWP union as well as the utility itself, might require changes in the contract between the city and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18.

L.A. residents knew the new contract agreed to in August is far from perfect. This is something else to work on to make the nation’s largest municipal utility more open and responsive to the people it serves.